Remember Ekta Kapoor’s regressively disgusting Kya Kool Hai Hum, Kya Super Kool Hai Hum and Kya Kool Hai Hum 3? Especially part 3 which was labelled as a porncom had viewers cringing at regular intervals owing to the vulgar portrayal of female characters who were reduced to being mere sexual objects for the lustful male gaze. No wonder Rediff rated the movie as disgusting while India Today said the movie has cringe-worthy and offensive jokes, tasteless slapstick gags, shots of cleavage, women moaning and scratching themselves, throwing themselves at men, white foreign ones dancing in skimpy clothes and men with libido.

But all that seems to be now conveniently forgotten as Ekta Kapoor is on board to present the highly acclaimed Lipstick Under My Burkha. The talk today is all about women empowerment. In the speech that Ekta gave at the press meet of the movie yesterday, she thundered, ” Sex is something that has been repressed in case of women for many years. As a women, you are told to cover up or else the man becoming a beast is justified. We have to discriminate between sex and sexual crime. Sexual crime is a problem. Sex if it is consensual is not a problem. God has given us a body and it feels. And as long as we are in control and we deal in anything that is consensual, morality should be our personal issue. It can’t be forced on us. We need to talk about sex like adults without playing it up. If you see the movie, it is not at any point vicarious. It is not at any point exploitative.”

Neat speech but then it appeared to be in stark contradiction to the kind of characters and dialogues conveyed in the Kya Kool Hai Hum franchise. Infact, ‘vicarious and exploitative‘ were the exact elements that were propagated in her sex comedies. What otherwise would explain double entendres like Shakuntala becoming Sucku and Khoobsurat becoming Boobsurat in the film. But ofcourse all those have now been effectively covered by a ‘burkha’ as Ekta donned a different garb to promulgate women empowerment in a big way. She also defended herself well when asked about enforcing stereotypes through her women characters in her serials. ” My women characters are strong. The men in my serials are arm candies, ” Ekta rightfully pointed out. Unfortunately, the reverse of it was what she portrayed in her three sex comedy films.

Interestingly, the trailer of Lipstick Under My Burkha has a slide that reads- From the studio that brought to you LSD, The Dirty Picture and Udta Punjab. Wonder why Ekta didn’t think of adding Kya Super Kool Hai Hum as one of the embellishments along with the above three? Perhaps it would not have been ‘Kool’ enough!